These are
the places where stood the primeval "forest smithies," whose forges were
perhaps worked with the hand or the foot, and of which our heroic
legends sing; these are the scenes of the first rude beginnings of our
iron industry which, since then, has developed so mightily. Thus the
oldest information that we possess on the subject of our German
manufacturing industry starts, like our entire civilization, in the
forest.
For centuries it was fitting that progress should advocate exclusively
the rights of the field; now, however, it is fitting that progress
should advocate the rights of the wilderness _together with_ the rights
of the cultivated land. And no matter how much the political economist
may oppose and rebel against this fact, the folk-lorist economist must
persevere, in spite of him, and fight also for the rights of the
wilderness.
THE EYE FOR NATURAL SCENERY[13]
By WILHELM HEINRICH RIEHL
TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING
In topographical books of the pigtail age one may read that cities like
Berlin, Leipzig, Augsburg, Darmstadt, Mannheim are situated in "an
exceedingly pretty and agreeable region," whereas the most picturesque
parts of the Black Forest, the Harz Mountains, and the Thuringian Forest
are described as being "exceedingly melancholy," desolate and
monotonous, or, at least, "not especially pleasing." That was by no
means merely the private opinion of the individual topographer but the
opinion of the age; for each century has not only its own peculiar
theory of life--it has also its own peculiar theory oL natural scenery.
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